Myanmar

The area of South East Asia encompassing the region
where the borders of Laos, Thailand and Burma meet
once was the centre of the opium smuggling routes.This region has
generated a plethora of tales of derring do
involving romantic characters who have evolved into
Hollywood legends. In truth the heyday of the golden
Triangle has passed ,the product now smuggled over the
Salween River running in a north to south
direction, encompassing the Shan State to debouche into Thailand
and Laos.

The product of the region has been used as a source of income by a
number of armies and militia ;also by rouge elements
within legitimate armies of national governments.
The area of the greatest production,situated in southern Burma known as
the Shan State, is as vast as Oklahoma .

For centuries the Shan have been under
the yoke of the Burmese ,but for a short period when
the country was administered by the British . With
independence from the UK shortly after World War Two various
militias formed in
order to resist a harsh Rangoon government ranging
from that of the Wa Army in the west,the Mons in the center
, the Kareni and the Karen straddling the Thai border,
and the Mong Tai Army of the Shan State in the south
east.Also a player is the Communist Party of Burma (CPB)Army
stationed mainly close to the Chinese province of
Yunnan which is adjacent to the Shan State.

After independence in 1947, supposedly to combat the
lawlessness of the interior, the central government in
Rangoon created the Ka Kwe Ye (KKY), an organization
of militias who ,in exchange for loyalty to the central
government, were allowed to do just about anything ,which they did with a vengence so long as they did not attack government troops,the central government turning a blind eye
to their activities so long as they
assisted it in maintaining power.Into the mix must
be added the 93rd regiment of the
Kuomintang Army (KMT
) of Chiang- Kia -Check ,expelled by the Peoples
Liberation Army of Communist China, and ,although
encompassed by the Shan State Army and the C.P.B Army,was
by no means cowed.

The KMT had originally been subsidized by the CIA and
charged with conducting covert operations and
intelligence gathering on the Chinese
border. After a disastrous
attempted invasion of southern China in 1952 the CIA
withdrew their support ,the Burmese then dislodging it
from Shan State in 1961.Disowned by Taiwan they regrouped over the Thai border
at Tam Ngap and in the Mae Salong mountain redoubt,
north of Chiong Moi.

They soon cornered the opium market
with help from the Thai military and with the protection supplied by the
Thai police commander General Phao Synanan .Thailand
tolerated the KMT as it acted as a buffer to the
communists on the northern frontier.

The Mong Tai Army
One of the most remarkable armies of the region was
the army of the Shan State, the 'Mont Tai Army'(MTA)
under General Khum Sa (Prince of Prosperity)
Khum Sa has more of an aura of a successful businessman in his autumn
years than that of a ruthless drug lord.Mild polite and,
some say, including the DEA,was
in control of a vast amount of the worlds opium.

Khum
Sa started his career as a commander in the KKY
eventually going into business for himself . In 1964,
he cut his ties with the KKY setting himself up in the north east portion of the Shan
State by raising an army of about forty thousand
strong.This army stationed at Mong Ho was divided into three
elements :

the Noom Suk Herng,the youth wing who underwent training for up to six
years .

the regular Mong Tai Army who after intensive
basic training lasting six months went on to
advanced infantry training lasing for up to a year.

The cream were the special forces who trained in
the arts of assassination ,abduction and information
gathering.

From these are selected those who served as
the Generals body guard, distinguished by the red
ribbons attached to their rifle stocks.

Troops were proficient with a multitude of weapons
including the M16, AK 47, AKS 79, RPG 7 , the soviet
shoulder launched SA 7 Grail anti aircraft weapon and the US Stinger.
So good were they in the anti
aircraft role that the rudimentary Burmese air force were
loath to approach Mong Ho,their base HQ.

So good were they that they claim to have ejected the
KMT from the Shan State forcing them to subsist near
the Thai border north of Chiang Mai.This however was
not achieved without first undergoing some reverses,
the most notable during the 1967 Opium
Wars.They had issued an ultimatum to the KMT that
their units passing through MTA territory were subject to taxes payable to the MTA, similar to the ones the MTA had
to pay when passing though KMT territory.

In the
following June Khum Sa's opium was headed south from
Ningnum to Bon Khuan Loa village in the triangle
where the buyer, General Ouane Rallik of the Royal
Laotian Army, operated a heroin refinery. The armed
column linked up with a second shipment from central
Shan state creating an opium caravan of three hundred
mules a mile long. The KMT couldn’t let it get through
as if they did it would create revenues enough to
recruit and arm another thousand MTA soldiers thus putting it
on a par with the KMT and threatening their supply
routes.

In mid July KMT sprang an ambush south of Keng Yung.
The caravan managed to extract itself
and was then pursued by the KMT to Ban Khwan in Thailand.
General Ouame of the Royal Thai army ordered both armies out, backing up his demands with ariel
bombing and strafing, and the landing of
paratroopers . The
previously entrenched MTA retreated into Burma while
the KMT retreated to the north.General Ouame then took
possession of the unpaid for opium ,and ,in addition,
charged the KMT a ransom for the return of their
captured soldiers.

This General Ouane was good at playing
all of the angles and was responsible for supplying drug
addicted GI's stationed in Viet Nam during that conflict who were estimated to be 15% of the US army .Link to Burma(1)Link to Burma(2)